In a VMIMO (Virtual Multiple-Input Multiple-Output, virtual multiple-input multiple-output) technology, pairing is performed on user equipments (UE, User Equipment), so as to enable two paired user equipments to send data simultaneously on a same time-frequency resource, and share the same time-frequency resource, which implements space division multiplexing of the time-frequency resource, thereby improving capacity of an uplink system.
When VMIMO communication is performed, a problem to be considered primarily of a VMIMO communication method is how to select a proper user equipment to perform VMIMO pairing, so as to maximize overall system capacity. In an existing VMIMO communication method, when user equipment pairing is performed, for a currently scheduled user equipment, remaining unscheduled user equipments need to be searched. Each currently scheduled user equipment needs to perform a pairing attempt with all other unscheduled user equipments, and corresponding pairing measurement values (such as, orthogonality, a capacity gain and a PF priority). Finally, a pairing combination having a greatest measurement value is determined as paired user equipments in the VMIMO communication method.
For example, it is assumed that time-frequency resources in a sector may be scheduled to M user equipments for use. After M user equipments are scheduled, it is assumed that there are N remaining user equipments without allocated resources. The N unscheduled user equipments are regarded as candidates for paired user equipments of the M scheduled user equipments, that is, each user equipment in the M scheduled user equipments may attempt to be paired with each user equipment in the N user equipment. Therefore, it can be known that, when there are many user equipments (for example, the number N of unscheduled user equipments is large), a calculation amount of attempts to perform pairing on user equipments is large, and a requirement for implementation complexity of a product is high.